The source of Aribert Reimann’s ninth opera, premiered in Berlin last autumn, seems a logical follow-up to his previous straight Literaturoper settings of weighty Shakespeare (Lear), Strindberg (A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata), Kafka (The Castle) and Lorca (Bernarda Alba). Here he forms three early plays by the Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck into a spooky and oppressive trilogy of Death, the ‘invisible’ motivating agent behind all our lives. If you are one of the vocally active minority who thinks that nothing happens in Pelléas et Mélisande, be warned that that drama (most of whose major tropes are fully anticipated here) is an action-packed Trovatore-style romp compared with L’Invisible.

But it would be unfair to say that our attention, even without visible drama, is not fully held. The voyeurism common to the three scenes of death – a mother post-childbirth, an accident or suicide and a murder – make for compelling whodunnit listening. And, as before, Webern and Berg (and now, perhaps, Debussy in the third part here, ‘La mort de Tintagiles’) nourish Reimann’s melodies and harmonies. Especially noteworthy is his contrasting use of instrumental groups. Strings alone carry the suspicious voyeuristic world of the opening ‘L’Intruse’ (‘The Intruder’), winds only appearing for the second part, ‘Intérieur’, and (more savage) brass later. Similarly, the small ensemble of conventional voices we hear sharing roles in the three parts of the work are varied by the unearthly timbre of a trio of countertenors, who sing interludes with warning hints about the plot. As in Lear, Reimann augments the drama by the pure sound and tessitura of his vocal writing, recalling his special gifts as a Lied accompanist.

The Swiss soprano Rachel Harnisch, a frequent collaborator of Claudio Abbado’s, has a leading role in each part but dominates with the almost heroic Ygraine, Tintagiles’s sister, who tries to keep him from being murdered by the malevolent unseen Queen. She manages to make all the tricky leaps and intervals a full part of the character. Stephen Bronk is also most imaginative in the recitative-like writing of the Grandfather in ‘L’Intruse’. Somewhat like Britten’s Turn of the Screw, there is a continuous and vital red line of drama here of which the performance, clearly well prepared by house music director Donald Runnicles, never lets go.

The recording seems true and serviceable but a DVD to show us Vasily Barkhatov’s important creation of a production would have been invaluable.